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Where is the national strategy to protect our health from climate change? Where are the efforts to help health organisations transition to a low carbon sector?

The budget failed to address these and other important health concerns around climate change, according to Fiona Armstrong, Convenor of the Climate and Health Alliance.

There is an ongoing failure of the federal government and opposition to respond to the risks to health from climate change.

We should be seeing commitments in this budget (and in proposals from the alternative government) to protect health by increasing investment in adaptation measures for vulnerable groups and resourcing organizations and groups that provide services to people who are vulnerable to health impacts from climate change.

But adaptation by itself is nowhere near enough to protect health – much greater attention must be given to mitigation – there are many gains possible for health, in terms of improved population health, from strategies to reduce emissions.

Cutting emissions should be considered one of our most important national public health strategies, with associated climate benefits accumulating in the long term, but from which the health benefits are direct and available immediately – IF we choose to implement strategies to effectively cut emissions.

We should be seeing a national strategy being developed to protect health from climate change, as well as investments in the health sector itself to transition to a low carbon sector, protecting healthcare budgets from future shocks associated with future energy price rises.

A fiscally responsible strategy would be to help the sector realize its available energy efficiency gains and reduce its environmental footprint, such that the health sector itself becomes less of a risk to environmental health, and is able to weather the economic, environmental and social disruption that may lie ahead.

The Climate and Health Alliance along with Koowerup Regional Health Service recently initiated a Climate and Health Clinic – a two day event run as part of the Melbourne Sustainability Festival.

With the help of more than 20 fabulous volunteers, the Clinic offered ‘climate and health checks’ to hundreds of festival-goers, and those who wished to could have their own prescription for ‘climate and health’.

The prescriptions acted as a checklist to assist people identify actions that they could take in their own lives that would cut emissions and improve their own and/or population health at the same time.

The popup clinic idea and the prescriptions offer a great health promotion tool to use the health ‘frame’ to talk about climate change, and help raise awareness of the health benefits associated with cutting emissions – a WIN! WIN! situation.

Want to know more? View a couple of our videos from the event! What CAHA lacks in professional media resources, it makes up for in enthusiasm – so excuse the quality, but we hope you get the idea!

In the final week in Durban a sense of frustration is permeating the COP, where aspirations for a global deal remain high, but expectations swing between mildly hopeful and almost absent.

The tone of the Australian delegation is one of determined but checked progress, maintaining there will be positive outcomes on some issues while keeping expectations low.

Australia continues its dream run in terms of public sentiment here, where many international delegates are under the impression that Australia’s carbon price legislation has real significance in terms of emissions reductions, seemingly unaware of the tiny step it actually represents. Still, the misconception is creating goodwill and perhaps even pressure on other countries to commit to binding targets at the international level, so what is lacking in policy efficacy is being made up in PR kudos, at least for now.

In terms of progress in the discussions, China is signalling a openness to legally binding obligations but stonewalling by New Zealand, Canada, Russia, the US and Japan means there is little hope of any final decisions on legal form. Many negotiating efforts by the big polluting nations appear to be about delaying decisions for as long as possible, with the staggeringly irresponsible date of 2020 for mandatory emissions cuts being advocated by the US.

The options currently being pursued range from: retaining some aspects of the Kyoto Protocol, but with limits to offsets, greatly enhanced measurement, verification and reporting, and the development of a new legally binding instrument to be agreed at COP18; to securing some agreement on mitigation measures but with the decision on legal form delayed until 2020. A review of global targets is being proposed to raise the level of commitments, but India, the US and China all want that delayed until after a scientific review slated for 2015.

Filling the coffers of the Green Climate Fund, for adaptation and mitigation in developing nations agreed to at Cancun, is also proving difficult; promised funds are failing to materialise and many nations are reluctant to name the figure they will commit in order to realise the agreed goal of $US100 billion per year by 2020.

Hopes of a fast start, that would see substantial funds committed between 2010 and 2012, are now looking a bit shaky. Ensuring these funds are a) delivered and b) new and additional (i.e. not rebadged aid funding) is the main game. Too little discussion has been had about additional ways of raising funds, however redirecting fossil fuel subsidies is an obvious choice, with the Robin Hood tax (a minuscule tax on financial transactions that could potentially raise US$400 billion a year) another obvious contender.

Bad behaviour by countries here at the COP is rewarded with the title of “fossil of the day“. Winners to date include: Turkey (for its 98 per cent growth in emissions post 1990 plus seeking Kyoto $ to spend on coal and roads); the US (for turning up but only wanting to discuss climate action in nine years time); Canada (for refusing to cooperate with just about everything); and New Zealand and Russia (joint first place for wanting to benefit from Kyoto but not be bound by it).

The gap between reality and commitment makes these a rather surreal set of discussions, the nature of which is well captured in this quote from Climate Action Network Australia Director Georgina Woods:

“We are all struggling to find a way to describe the kind of banal failure that is at risk of emerging here. I arrived steeled for major drama, hysterics and intensity; what’s happening instead is potentially worse – a slide into oblivion masked by the veneer of progress. Because there certainly is progress. The LCA text [long term cooperative action] represents a huge amount of work by negotiators in the last 12 months, and encompasses many things that the people of the world need and want to deal with climate change… and yet… putting off the major decisions… leaves open the possibility that they will find the important decisions all too hard, and find shelter together in their cowardice, and guiltily cobble together agreements that have the semblance of cooperation, but do not change the trajectory we are already on: towards a four degrees warmer world.”

Current existing pledges fall well short of what the science indicates is needed to give us only a modest chance (66 per cent) of limiting warming to 2°C (itself a target that is not considered desirable or safe), so it’s no wonder a lot of talk here is focusing on the ‘gigatonne’ gap, or emissions gap, that exists between pledges and the actual emissions cuts needed. Global emissions leapt in 2010, but a recent UNEP report says this puts us on track to be 12 gigatonnes (Gt) of CO2e over what we can afford to emit if the world is to have any hope of staying below 2ºC, a goal described by NASA climate scientist Jim Hansen as a recipe for disaster.

What do we really want from Durban? Ideally, Ministers would go home having agreed to a multilateral approach to addressing climate change, with a combination of legally binding instruments, decisions, rules and guidelines. These should be, in the words of the COP President, Maite Nkoana-Mashabane, South Africa’s International Relations Minister, “pragmatic, effective, timely and appropriate.” This would require documented commitments for which there are consequences if countries fail to keep them: mechanisms for ensuring emissions trajectories are consistent with the timeframe that science indicates; sufficient climate financing for developing nations to adapt as well as begin their own low carbon transitions; and action from all countries, led by the industrialised nations.

It’s not the case that there have been no genuine efforts to reach agreement. Indeed it seems there has been many constructive discussions, some of which may well have been influenced by the COP President’s invocation of ‘Indabas’ – a traditional form of South African participatory democracy in which people come together in the spirit of ‘Ubuntu,’ being motivated by the common good, to discuss a matter of great importance and to solve intractable or difficult collective problems in ways that benefit the community as a whole. (Sound familiar?)

So, what have we got without a global deal?

It seems increasingly likely that we will see emerging cooperation between nation states, as bilateral and regional deals are made. Some pressure may come from developing nations who refuse to provide offsets for wealthier countries who fail to act. Aside from those, we are left, largely, to rely on domestic policy commitments to deliver emissions reductions and the hope that commercial competitiveness and the actions of individual nation states will deliver a sufficiently broad rollout of clean renewable energy to see emissions peak in the timeframe left to avert runaway climate change.

The German Advisory Council (WGBU) remains cautiously optimistic this can be achieved and is working to facilitate that by offering a roadmap for a transformation to sustainability to any country or group of countries willing to take the lead. Their Social Contract for Sustainability offers willing leaders the opportunity to showcase how ambitious and committed actions can create a new pact for sustainability and demonstrate how breaking away from existing destructive pathways can deliver greater equity, social wellbeing, and economic security.

WGBU estimates the global cost of transformation would require $US200-$US1000 billion a year by 2030. This may seem a massive investment, but one they consider manageable through innovative business and financing models. They warn if it is not made, the costs associated with the economic, environmental and social disruption that a wildly unstable climate would be much, much more.

To create a bit of perspective, we already spend $500 billion globally each year on fossil fuel subsidies – a source of finance that would be more usefully deployed in a renewable energy transformation than driving dangerous climate change and causing millions of deaths from harmful air pollution.

In light of a less than optimum outcome from our governments, it’s encouraging other actors are not only envisioning but developing the roadmaps we need as a global community to reverse our current destructive path and shape a new future for our planet and our species.

But we should also prepare to be surprised, in the hope that those negotiators in Durban will reveal their hands as stronger than we thought. After all, they won’t be revealing all their cards till the very last. And before they do, may we hope they recall the words of that esteemed South African, Nelson Mandela, when he said: “It always seems impossible, until it is done.”

Earlier this month in Geelong, I attended a National Summit on “Transforming Australia”. This was a three-day meeting of 60 invited activists from various civil society groups around Australia.

We were united by a common concern that Australia will not be able to deal effectively with the problems that now confront the human world without transformative change in the way we manage our institutions, and especially our economy.

The firm view of this group was that simply tinkering around the edges of “business as usual” is a formula for national catastrophe. The starting point for most of the participants was that we must urgently transform our governance, our economy and our culture in ways that will permit our descendants to live within the limits of nature’s economy.

Australia’s political system is largely ignoring the seriousness of the gathering storm that includes climate change, peak oil, disastrous loss of ecosystems, increasing world hunger and inequity and continuing growth in the human population.

It is currently incapable of addressing these issues because it is being corrupted by the special interests of the status quo. If our children are to survive to a ripe old age we must transform our political institutions, including especially the way they are funded.

The Geelong Summit was the 5th meeting I have attended on this topic in the past 18 months. The Transform-Australia movement is still in its infancy but it is a growing network of thinkers, researchers, environmentalists and social policy activists.

The summit was an opportunity for sharing understanding and assets and to explore together, the process of building a radically new way of thinking about Australia’s future.

Of course, similar movement are developing in other countries around the world. Ours is not the only political system that is proving incapable of dealing with the realities that threaten our habitat.

But the consequences for Australia if we do not do so are more disastrous than in many other parts of the world. Already it seems from evidence presented by a national expert on the matter, our marvellous coral reefs are almost certainly doomed.

There was much discussion about the factors that motivate change. Fear for the future is a strong stimulus to denial.

Genuinely believing that a better and more attractive future is achievable is more likely to result in openness to radical change than lots of doom-saying.

That being said, we can no longer ignore the scientific evidence that our human world has already crossed a number of critical natural boundaries, which means that we have exceeded already by about 50% the Earth’s capacity to sustain us in our current use of resources and release of waste.

Yet, still our population and the global economy are growing and eroding these precious resources.

So, where to next?

We are a smart species; too smart I hope to hasten our own extinction.

Smart enough also I think to recognise that there are greater satisfactions in being alive then simply possessing more “stuff”.

Realistic enough to understand at last that limits to growth have been reached and that we are capable of designing a stable state economy that will work, not just for some people, but for all of us, and the planet’s health as well.

All of this will clearly take some time and those who are frightened of change will resist it if they can.

A number of groups now exist in Australia, committed to the transformative task.

The Transform-Australia Group, which helped to convene the summit, has a website and a Manifesto, which it invites ordinary citizens and community groups to endorse.

The Transform Australia Manifesto spells out a vision, mission and values as well as aspirations for the evolving movement.

Its current supporters include a group of 10 catalysts who see their task as promoting broad scale community understanding of systems thinking and the shift in mindset that is required in the special circumstances that we now face.

The Vision for the Manifesto reads as follows:

“Our vision is for a Transformed Australia, where the well-being of all humans and the health of the planet are synonymous; where we accept that nature is our provider and we are its stewards; where we acknowledge that our economy, ecology and ecosystem are interdependent; and where a sustainable future for our descendants exists”.

If you have read this far, I hope you will visit the website, consider the manifesto in its entirety and append your name as a supporter of the principles espoused there.

Essential change will only come as a result of the will and insistence of people in the community.

Leadership will not come from our politicians on this matter but they will respond to the community’s lead.

Bob Douglas is Chair of SEE-Change ACT and a catalyst with the Transform Australia group. He is a medical epidemiologist, and was formerly the Director of the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health at The Australian National University.

This article was first published on 21st Otcober 2011 on the Crikey health blog, Croakey.

“It was an excellent conference with international speakers updating attendees on the latest climate science and coincided with the release of the government’s carbon tax package. The premise of the conference was to describe the 4 degree world our politicians are planning for and in so doing motivate us for mitigation. In this they certainly succeeded as the science is very grim.

Key messages for me were:

Australia is the most vulnerable continent to climate change impacts

The current CO2 concentration is 392 ppm (pre-industrial 280); the current level of warming is one degree above pre-industrial levels

There is an enormous disconnect between the international agreement to limit global warming to 2 degrees (450ppm) and the current policies which see us (with a fossil fuel intensive model) reaching 4 degrees warming by 2070 – and hence 8 degrees by 2300. No human life at this temperature.

We need to peak global emissions by 2020 to have a 2/3 chance of limiting warming to 2 degrees

Global damage is a highly non-linear function of global warming ie. once certain tipping points are crossed there is no way to reverse them and a cascade starts ie. the Greenland ice sheet loss may be triggered at 1.5-2.5 degrees

Preliminary evidence suggests that once global temperature is over 5 degrees it will rapidly accelerate above 10 degrees

This is the CRITICAL DECADE for action to avert dire climate change; a strong mitigation future is technologically and economically feasible but is it politically feasible?

Australia has 7-10% of global biodiversity; we are the most vulnerable continent because we are flat and have nutrient poor soil. This means that species migration is especially great ie. with one degree warming, species need to move 100m altitudinally and 125km south; this is difficult as many of our rivers run east-west

Australia currently has the highest mammal extinction rate in the world. For every 1 degree of warming 100-500 species of bird will become extinct. Ecosystems can only withstand <0.1 degree temperature increase per decade (current rate 0.13deg C; 0.46 at higher latitudes)

In addition to mitigation, the answer here is to protect more land, restore some of what’s lost and understand that landscape level management is more important than individual species ie. protect ecosystems

Session 6- Australian Marine impacts

Oceans maintain climate by absorbing CO2, generating O2 through marine plants and absorbing heat. They also supply our food and generate income through tourism and food supply

Impacts due to climate change include warming, acidification and a reduction in oxygen content

The Great Barrier Reef (GBR) generates $6 billion/year and employs 63,000 people- second largest employer in QLD. GBR is the most biodiverse ecosystem in Australia and is especially vulnerable to global warming as we see mass coral bleaching and acidification of the ocean

80% world’s coral reefs are at risk of disappearance at 1.5 degrees warming

Coral reef safety threshold crossed at the latest at 336ppm in 1979

As the ocean has warmed, species have migrated south, today at 1 degree of warming marine organisms have moved 100km south and there is 50% less coral cover now than 50yrs ago

By 2030 we can expect annual mass coral bleaching- the reef does not always recover from this ie. most pacific reefs bleached in 1998 have not recovered.

Session 9- Health impacts by Professor Tony Mc Michael

The issue is not adaptation to 4 degrees of warming as this will not be possible- the need is to strengthen our resolve to mitigation

Australia’s lack of action on climate change is causing thousands of deaths in the third world

Tony asked “What do economists eat?” We don’t just catch fish to sell them as a commodity; we catch them as a food source to maintain our health.

Session 15- Mitigation- Can we?

An excellent solutions-focussed session. I especially enjoyed the presentation from Anna Skarbek from CLIMATEWORKS whose answer was clearly ‘Yes we can!

There was also an address by Greg Combet, Minister for Climate Change and Ross Garnaut discussing the carbon tax package.

Next steps

I personally would prefer to attend a conference where we talk about limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees as 2 degrees sees us accepting the loss of entire countries (ie. Maldives, Pacific islands etc) and I wonder if the scientific community is allowing itself to have its parameters set by the political agenda?

I would also like to see some research focus on mitigation rather than just the adaptation focus of the NCCARF and a place for science and health experts not just economists on key advisory groups like the Climate Change Authority.”

Given the hysteria around the current debate on a carbon tax, it seems timely to republish on the CAHA blog an edited version of this article published in Fairfax’s National Times last year: No need to be afraid of a tax on carbon.

The agreement between The Gillard Government and The Greens that a carbon price is paramount to tackling carbon pollution signalled a restoration of a significant climate policy agenda in Australia. It was well overdue, given the overwhelming recognition that a carbon price is central to effective emissions reductions.

This has been the case since Sir Nicholas Stern’s landmark report in 2006, which identified a carbon price as a key element to cutting emissions. And despite independent MP Bob Katter’s poor opinion of Sir Nicholas (describing him in 2010 as “a lightweight”), Stern remains a pre-eminent expert on the economics of climate change.

Nothing has changed since his report in terms of the need for a carbon price; only the urgency of its application has increased.

Achieving this in Australia, however, has been difficult to date – the Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme (CPRS) was a miserable attempt at pricing carbon, and its flawed approach (rejected quite rightly by The Greens and others) with inadequate targets, excessive use of offsetting and unnecessary compensation to polluters, has contributed to the discrediting of emissions trading as the preferred option for pricing carbon internationally.

While Opposition Leader Tony Abbott remains vehement in his opposition to new taxes, he doesn’t (yet) appear to understand that his policy of direct investment is just another way of putting a price on carbon. And while Abbott may be opposed to the idea of a specific carbon tax, the allocation of funds to reduce carbon emissions is using revenue collected through taxation.

To argue that we shouldn’t have a carbon price because it will drive up electricity prices is nonsense – electricity prices are already going up and will go up even further without a carbon price, because there is no incentive to invest in energy generation infrastructure while there is uncertainty around a price on carbon. Capital expenditure on power generation in Australia is expected to decline $10 billion over the next five years unless there is a price on carbon.

In terms of actual mechanisms, the most appropriate tool is a carbon tax. Supported by most environmental economists (and others such as Nobel Laureate Joseph Stiglitz and Jeremy Sachs), a carbon tax is already in place in many European jurisdictions where it has reduced emissions while maintaining, even improving in some instances, economic productivity.

Most arguments against a carbon tax incorrectly identify the misplaced allocation of funds as a flaw of the mechanism itself, rather than its faulty implementation. A carbon tax is a way of obtaining revenue (appropriately, by taxing polluters). What is done with that revenue determines what its impact will be on the community, whether it is supporting low income or vulnerable households or supporting the expansion of renewable energy technologies – not the tax itself. Its popular appeal could also be enhanced by reducing other taxes, such as income taxes, while maintaining the pressure on polluters to find ways to cut emissions.

The “anti-tax” position adopted by Abbott is a very simplistic argument. A carbon tax will provide a revenue base that we can use to diversify our economy away from a ”quarry and dump” to potentially manufacturing, operating and exporting renewable energy infrastructure – creating thousands of jobs and bringing wealth to our deprived regional areas.

We are witnessing of course the inevitable squealing from the emissions intensive industries, and re-runs of the “sky is falling” argument by the big polluters. The reality, however, is that ongoing opposition to a price on carbon will mean we better steel ourselves for the “brownouts” that will result, not because of the carbon price, but because we lack one. The failure or unwillingness to invest in new power generation will inevitably lead to considerable economic disruption and societal dysfunction.

But while a carbon price is central, it is only one tool in the suite of policy options that are needed to bring down emissions, help make clean renewable energy cheaper, and discourage polluters from dumping their waste in the atmosphere. We need to move quickly to a suite of policy mechanisms that not only make clean renewable energy competitive with fossil fuels but will also reduce emissions from transport and building stock and agriculture.

To achieve this it is vital that we legislate a carbon price and move on from the argument about a carbon tax versus emissions trading. We must seek the establishment of a national plan to guide Australia’s transition to a low carbon and then zero carbon economy. Other more responsible countries are investing in whole of society transition plans – recognising that transition is inevitable and, carefully managed, it will bring far more positive outcomes than ad hoc adaptation and emergency responses.

We’ve had enough of intermittent commitment to individual policy mechanisms – it is time for a considered framework that will guide our country’s transition to the low and then zero emissions society that promotes and protects our economic, environmental and social wellbeing.

The passing of the flood levy to rebuild Queensland by the Senate today will allow for a new beginning for thousands of people affected by the floods, and go some way to addressing the damage repair bill – estimated as billions of dollars.

This levy will assist in alleviating some of the catastrophic impacts of the floods on the state and on local communities, for whom recovery will take months and years as houses and infrastructure are rebuilt, and lives and businesses pieced back together. It is to be hoped the support of government and community along with relief appeals will make the task of rebuilding easier for affected communities.

But as communities are rebuilt, what preparations are being made to protect them from future damage and risk?

These floods were a sobering reminder of the power and influence of the natural environment on the safety and wellbeing of the community.

But one of the most extraordinary aspects of the recent extreme weather in Australia was not the ferocity and scale of the record breaking events but the absence of any public dialogue about the link between these events and global warming.

The recent floods in Queensland and Victoria have been widely acknowledged as being of epic and unprecedented proportions but little is being said about the human contribution to forces driving these events.

Just as the reports from the devastating bushfires in Victoria in 2009 ignored the contribution of anthropogenic global warming and its subsequent effects on the severity and frequency of extreme weather events, there has been little or no recognition among journalists or political leaders about the links between climate change and the floods that affected hundreds of thousands of people across Australia.That politicians ignore the issue is easier to understand – the Queensland Premier has an election to fight next year and her government has recently endorsed an ongoing to commitment to industries responsible for causing climate change, such as coal.

But the failure of the mainstream media to question this contribution, to seek the advice of experts, or to draw links between these events and global warming in an effort to educate (one the media’s most important roles) the community on this issue is bewildering and alarming. The failure to do so will almost certainly come at considerable future cost to the community. The costs of cleaning up and rebuilding after the floods in Queensland is enormous, and goes well beyond financial and extend to broader economic as well social, psychological, and human health costs.

Given the likelihood that these events will occur again, with one in a hundred year events now occurring every few years (or in the case of St George, every year), and with increasing intensity and frequency, we should be seeing a recognition of this in actions to prevent further catastrophe for populations at risk.

The scientific evidence is extremely clear: continuing to burn fossil fuels for power generation and thus contributing to further global warming places the entire human population at great risk. It places particular populations (e.g. those residing on low lying areas; some coastal communities; those with limited water security) at considerable risk. For too long, too many Australians seem to have adopted the view that climate change is only going to affect poor people, far away. But as evidenced by recent events in Australia, we can now count ourselves as among those populations at great risk. This level of risk has arisen from the global average temperature rise that has already occurred of just 0.8°C.

This level of warming took around 100 years to occur. However we know that, thanks to an inexorable rise in greenhouse gas emissions (up about 10% each decade in Australia), atmospheric CO2 levels have now risen to 390ppm, higher than at any time during human civilisation on Earth. This is considered responsible for increases of global average temperatures of around 0.2°C per decade.

Given there is now demonstrable current catastrophic effects on our local population from less than 1°C rise, it is incredible to witness the failure to acknowledge this risk by those in a position to not only inform the population of this seminal risk, but those who have accepted responsibility to lead our community.

Russian President Medvedev acknowledged the link between extreme weather events and global warming in 2010 when unprecedented soaring temperatures contributed to 56,000 deaths in his country, saying “… what is happening now in our central regions is evidence of this global climate change, because we have never in our history faced such weather conditions in the past.”

The effect of these events on Australian communities is shocking. And it is regrettable that only now will many Australians feel any empathy with the 750,000 recently left homeless in Sri Lanka from flooding and the 20 million displaced in Pakistan in 2009.

Emeritus Professor of Science and Technology at Griffith University in Queensland, Ian Lowe said: “The Queensland floods are another reminder of what climate science has been telling us for 25 years. As well as a general warming and increasing sea levels, it predicted more frequent extreme events: floods, droughts, heatwaves and severe bushfires.”

In order to continue to protect communities from ongoing and increasing risk from these extreme weather events in Australia, it is time our political leaders and those in the media acknowledged the evidence of the risk we face. For in order to obtain the requisite community support for policy action, more information about these risks must be shared explicitly with the community.

Businesses that are bearing the brunt of extreme weather events are less reticent to do so, with global reinsurer Munich Re stating in December 2010: “The only plausible explanation for the rise in weather-related catastrophes is climate change”.

Given that we can’t take effective action unless the entire community comprehends the very grave risks we face, it is time our leaders (and more of the media) did the same.

The Climate and Health Alliance joined representatives of the Australian Conservation Foundation, The Climate Project, Union Climate Connectors and the Australian Youth Climate Coalition in Canberra to lobby for the introduction of a carbon price.

Around thirty people visited around 40 MPs and Senators in November 2010, outlining the case for a price on carbon to replace Australia’s ageing and high emitting fossil fuelled power generation infrastructure. A price on carbon would create an economic incentive to encourage the development and deployment of clean renewable energy.